"A Mental Magic Square"...ever hear of it? I guess it's a classic; I recently dug out my old magic books; I have like six or so. The one I'm starting with is called "Classic Magic Tricks" so yeah...probably a classic. The basic effect is that the magician asks an audience member between three and ten then asks another audience member to pick a number between zero and ten. Let's say the first chick picks the number four, and the second dude picks number 7; the magician then creates a magic square that equals 47 in eighteen different ways, using his mental processes alone. In the days of old, mathematicians would spend days or even weeks trying to create a specific Magic Square. Nowadays, computers can make magic squares in a mere matter of moments. And now....so can I.

I've finally mastered the mathematical formula to accomplish it, but I still have a long ways to go before I've perfected the actual act altogether. I haven't lost my proverbial training wheels yet; without going into too much detail, there's a bunch of math that I have to do and currently I have to do it on a piece of scratch paper; hardly a dramatic effect, but I'm sure after creating dozens and dozens of more magic squares, I'll become confident enough in my understanding of it to start doing away with the scratch paper, and begin doing the calculations all in my head while simultaneously filling in the magic square on the large blackboard that I would use for a stage presentation, as opposed to my ghetto little note pad and office pen haha. I'll see if I can post a video once I'm able to pull it all off effortlessly and flawlessly, but then comes the next hard part; the presentation of it all; the showmanship; it's not enough for me to just know how to do a trick; I want to be able to do this trick better than anyone else can, otherwise my chances of making it as successful professional magician as a career is approximately five percent probable; not very uplifting stats unfortunately; pretty tough out there as the saying goes.

I am not sure if you are asking a question. But presentation/showmanship is the hardest thing about magic. And you just made it harder by choosing the effect you did. What you are going to have to be is dynamic in your speech and mannerisms, make sure you are talking to your audience and not your props. Make eye contact. Be direct and clear. As for the actual patter? That is going to depend on you.

Nope; no questions; more of a journal entry on my progress. Indeed, I agree; the Showmanship is the most crucial part of magic; a magician should be entertaining first and foremost!

In regards to the Mental Magic Square, I think I've finally got all four sets of four numbers memorized. I'm doing it a bit differently than the way the book taught me because the book was WRONG, for starters, and secondly because I just feel that's an obligation as a magician; to do a trick in a way that is unique to you and that isn't usually done that way. In the book, it says that one can't create a magic square with any number less than forty, but that must have been a typographical error, because I was able to use the same method to make a magic square all the way back to thirty.

And I sincerely regret to inform that I did something I promised myself I would never do....though it was kind of an accident: ....I went to YouTube! AARRRHHGHHHHGGGGGG! XD I was looking for this effect particularly to see what other magicians had to say on it, but instead, I stumbled across and entirely new method of performing the magic square, one that allows the magician to form a magic square all the way back to the number twenty-two; ALMOST ten digits better than I'd be able to....then I saved it. *hangs my head in shame*. .......But I guess I'm a little conflicted on it too, because, I DID buy the trick (at least a version of it), which was the version that I THOUGHT I was going to see, so perhaps resorting to YouTube doesn't count as stealing if you actually bought the book that taught the trick? Meh. I'll make more of an effort to stay away from there in the future.

Ughhh....but now I'm wondering if there's ANOTHER formula out there that I could learn that would let me create a magic square all the way back to the number ten, so that way I would never have to ask the first spectator to "Pick a number between 3 and 10", like the book tells me to. Seriously? Three and ten? Why does the second spectator get to choose a number between one and ten but not the first spectator?! It doesn't make sense! It's suspicious as heck! It's just not fair!

Oh well....I suppose there's always the option of incorporating a deck of cards into the trick, and simply make sure the first guy doesn't pick an ace hahaha. XD

PS: Just about mastered the current version, but it's still not ready yet for presentation; I want to make sure the entire formula is second nature to me before I attempt it for an audience so that way I'll be able to focus more on my presentation and patter, knowing full well that all the numbers I need are locked concretely and safely in my mind. Oh yeah; I forgot to mention that in the book it told me to just write the numbers I need in light blue pencil at the top of the notepad so that people couldn't see it, but that seemed too lazy to me, and I didn't want to risk an audience member getting too close and seeing that string of numbers there, so yep, memorization was the path to go haha.

There's a book on magic squares by Mark Farrar - magicsquaresbook.com - I do not own this so can't speak from personal experience, but I did see it recommended on another forum recently, it's well reviewed, and it's pretty cheap at $10 as a download so might be worth a try. I've also heard some good things about Mostly Perfect by Michael Daniels - again pretty inexpensive and available from lybrary.com